Bruce Major, of the Higganum section of Haddam, is a Civil War re-enactor who builds view cameras and portrays a Civil War era photographer during encampments. He built this 5X7 wet plate view camera and the tripod.

Bruce Major, of the Higganum section of Haddam, is a Civil War re-enactor who builds view cameras and portrays a Civil War era photographer during encampments. He built this 5X7 wet plate view camera and the tripod. (Cloe Poisson, Hartford Courant)

ERIK HESSELBERGSpecial to The Courant

A Civil War re-enactor from Haddam portrays a photographer on the battlefield, using cameras he makes himself.

HADDAM — Bruce Major plays war.

He was a Revolutionary War soldier at Valley Forge during the bitter winter of 1777-78, and he witnessed bloody Civil War battles at Manassas, Shiloh, and Antietam, where Rebel sharpshooters cut down Connecticut troops crossing pretty Antietam Creek.

It was all pretend, though. Everyone who fell got up and had lunch.

Major is a Civil War re-enactor — but he doesn't portray a soldier. He's a photographer.

"I chose to be a civilian," says Major. "I don't have to choose sides, and everyone loves a photographer."

Well, not everyone. When he participated in Revolutionary War re-enactments, his buddies cursed his presence on the battlefield with his bulky tripod and 1850s view camera, like Mathew Brady, trying to capture the action.

Courtesy of Bruce Major

Bruce Major, of the Higganum section of Haddam, took this photo -- called "Drummer Boy" -- during one of the Civil War re-enactments in which he often participates as a photographer. He builds his own view cameras and wears period clothing.

Bruce Major, of the Higganum section of Haddam, took this photo -- called "Drummer Boy" -- during one of the Civil War re-enactments in which he often participates as a photographer. He builds his own view cameras and wears period clothing.

(Courtesy of Bruce Major)

"God, they were annoyed," he says. "They kept saying, 'Photography didn't exist then!' So, I moved on to the Civil War after photography was invented."

In an age of pixels and megapixels, Bruce Major is something of an anomaly. The Haddam resident belongs to a small but dedicated group that has gone in another direction, embracing a photographic process invented in 1850 and employed during the Civil War, the "wet plate," or "collodion wet plate," method.

It's a painstaking process, in which flammable collodion is spread onto a metal or glass plate and plunged into a bath of silver nitrate, which makes it photosensitive. The plate is then exposed in the camera, and developed while "wet"; hence the name.

"You have about seven minutes to work before the collodion dries, after which it's useless," Major says. "Photographers would pose their subjects first, arrange everything, and take the picture, then race into the darkroom. If they were working in the field, as Civil War photographers were, the darkroom was a tent."

"You had to be really smart to be a photographer then," Major adds. "These guys were not only artists, but chemists."

Major loves the detail and rich texture of wet plate images, but he's not a purist. His antique view cameras are also equipped to hold sheet film, which, once developed, can be scanned into a computer and manipulated in Photoshop.

A retired machinist, Major has a Yankee tinkerer's spirit. He lives in a log cabin he built himself on a hill above a rushing stream where the first Haddam settlers in the 1660s erected grist mills and saw mills. Another of his hobbies is making period toys and musical instruments like the psaltery, a stringed instrument in the zither family.

Major, who is 70, started making cameras 40 years ago. His first was adapted from an 11-by-14 view camera from the 1920s. Later, a camera-collecting friend let him copy an early model, a rare 1840s camera obscura of the type used by the Frenchman Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the daguerreotype and a father of photography.

Major has built dozens of cameras since then, some for friends some for himself, all fitted with original lenses, usually French- or English-made, from the 1850s and '60s.

Major is finicky about what he wears. His wife, June, makes all his outfits, based on careful study of historical photographs and engravings. When in character, he usually dons the ankle-length white smock of the studio photographer, giving him a magisterial air.

At a recent Haddam Historical Society event, Major strutted about in a buff waistcoat, cravat and baggy plaid trousers that looked like they came off a couch. "I saw this fabric in New Hampshire and had to have it," he said. "Now, some people might think people didn't wear loud plaid like this, but they certainly did," he said. "I can show you the photographs."

His leather shoes were made by a company that supplies re-enactors, as were his wire-rimmed spectacles.

Major is equally careful about telling history. He likes to point out that Brady, whose name is synonymous with Civil War photography, did not take many of the celebrated images for which he is credited.

An astute businessman, Brady was something of a corporation, dispatching 20 photographers to cover the Civil War. But only the master's name appeared on the final image, much to the grumbling of his assistants. It is only recently that the names of these talented men have become known.

One of the best was Alexander Gardner, a Scotsman who ran Brady's Washington, D.C., studio for a few years. "Gardner is my favorite photographer," Major says. "I just love his work."

Gardner's most famous photograph is called "Home of Rebel Sharpshooter," which purports to show a dead Confederate sharpshooter at Gettysburg slumped in a hallow between two boulders, his rifle standing nearby.

Historians now know the iconic image was staged; the body was dragged by Gardner and his assistant 40 feet from the battlefield and placed between the rocks, a spot known as "Devil's Den."

Major always admired the photograph, and on a visit to Gettysburg some years ago, decided to re-create the re-creation. "I was at Devil's Den where the photograph was taken, and this soldier in a Confederate uniform walked by," Major says. "I asked him if he would pose for the picture and he said 'Sure.'"

He calls up the image on his computer. It's faithful in every detail. "I think it came out pretty good, don't you think?" he says.